Officials prepare to reopen local preserve

POWAY -- Nine months after the Cedar fire blackened virtually
all of Sycamore Canyon/Goodan Ranch Open Space Preserve, county
officials are preparing to reopen the park to the public.

A popular place for hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding
before the blaze, the 2,143-acre nature area has been padlocked
since the fire in late October. Plans call for the public to be
allowed back onto all but a small portion of the roughly 9.7 miles
of the preserve's trails, starting at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 12.

Poway Councilwoman Betty Rexford serves on a joint powers
authority that oversees the nature area. On Monday, she said she
was thrilled with the reopening plan.

"It gives people a chance to go in and look at all the new
growth and see all the devastation after the fire and all," Rexford
said.

A tour that she and other city officials took last month in the
preserve revealed that plants and animals are beginning to return,
she said, although a historical homestead in the park remains a
total loss.

"It was looking good," Rexford said of the park. "Things are
coming back. The sad thing was, the house was down to the rocks.
But they're already making plans … to build another farmhouse next
to it."

Word of the upcoming reopening prompted about 30 volunteers to
spend part of Sunday rebuilding some of the preserve's trails.

Hoes and rakes in hand, the group -- composed mostly of members
of the San Diego Mountain Bike Association and Back Country
Horsemen's San Diego chapter -- cleared away dead tree limbs and
other fire debris, and graded and stabilized trails with erosion
problems.

The project augmented official efforts to clean up and restore
the preserve after the fire. The blaze was one of three wildfires
that ravaged the county late last year.

Stretching from the southeast corner of Poway south to Santee,
Sycamore Canyon/Goodan Ranch Open Space is owned by those cities
and the county. The park fell victim to the Cedar wildfire as it
roared toward Poway after burning part of Scripps Ranch.

The fire blackened the preserve's landscape and destroyed the
historic homestead, which had served as a visitors center and
ranger station. Damage has been estimated at about $2 million.

County officials initially said they hoped to reopen the
preserve as soon as possible. Once the extent of damage at the park
and other county ones became clear, though, officials decided to
focus on their efforts on a single area at a time.

Parks that had the least damage got first priority. Those
include Julian's William Heise County Park, which opened late last
year, and Valley Center's Hellhole Canyon Open Space Preserve,
reopened in April.

Sycamore Canyon/Goodan Ranch Open Space Preserve rose to the top
of the list a couple of months ago, said Amy Harbert, spokeswoman
for the county Parks and Recreation Department. Since then, Parks
and Recreation Department employees, California Conservation Corps
members and workers hired with federal money from a National
Emergency Grant program have put in more than 18,000 hours in the
preserve, she said.

"The work they've been doing is primarily in three categories --
debris removal, dead and hazardous tree removal, and erosion
control," Harbert said. "They also did some trail
rehabilitation."

While "a few little things" still need to be done along the
trails, the work should be finished in time for the reopening, she
said. The area around the homestead site is the only section of the
park that will stay closed to visitors indefinitely, Harbert
said.

Carol Crafts, president of the nonprofit Friends of Goodan Ranch
group said she thinks it's time for the park to reopen.

"It's going to take a while before it looks (the way we)
remember it from a year ago," she said. "But it's certainly coming
back."